Denis Christopher Lindsay

Career In 1965, Lindsay left England with the British Antarctic Survey to study lichen growth rates. The aim of the study was to determine how long the Antarctic islands have been free from a permanent ice cap. During the austral summer of 1965 to 1966, Lindsay became the first botanist to survey King George Island. He studied the floristics of both lichens and moss. While on Signy Island, he was upset after unexpectedly having to serve as meteorologist for the mission.

After the end of his first tour, Lindsay brought back living lichen specimens to Winterbourne in Birmingham. He noted their high survivorship despite the urban environment. In 1971, Lindsay published Vegetation of the South Shetland Islands, and in doing so was the first professional botanist to report on the flora of Half Moon Island and King George Island.

Lindsay returned to the Antarctic with the BAS from 1971 to 1972. He made botanical collections on the island of South Georgia, where he focused his attention on the genus Cladonia. In 1974, Lindsay published his seminal monograph The Macrolichens of South Georgia.

From 1974 to 1976, Lindsay served as Assistant Keeper in Botany at the Leicester Town Museum. In the 1980s, he led surveyors from the Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country to collect lichens in the West Midlands.

Legacy The lichen Parmelia lindsayana, first discovered on Signy Island, is named in Lindsay's honor. The holotype was collected by him in 1966. Ryszard Ochyra considered Lindsay "a good English lichenologist and effective collector".

Many of Lindsay's herbarium specimens are housed at the British Antarctic Survey Herbarium (AAS) in Cambridge. Others are held at the Leicestershire Museum Service Herbarium (LSR) in Leicester. and M. C. Clark's A Fungus Flora of Warwickshire (1981).

He is incorrectly attributed as "David C. Lindsay" in Authors of Plant Names.